hearing parents signing to hearing infants

[Mickey Jones]

Deaf parents sign to their hearing children and it does not interfere with
their acquisition of spoken English. The children can acquire both
simultaneously. I did my dissertation on this topic some years ago. Feel
free to email me directly with questions or for some references.

I have not studied/published about my own children (both hearing (me,
too)... my wife is deaf) who both sign and speak, but will be happy to
share anecdotes, too.

Mickey Jones

At 06:38 PM 7/21/99 -0400, you wrote:
>This question came to me via a friend, but I am not qualified to answer
it. Any
>advice for this person?
>
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 06:42:46 -0400
>From: Thomas Alexander <Thos at compuserve.com>
>
>Dear Mr. Mandel,
>
>My wife and I are expecting a child in early December.
>     We plan to use "baby signs" with him.  (Are you familiar with
>the book BABY SIGNS by L.Acredolo and S.Goodwyn?)  I'd be curious if
>you have a special opinion about using gesture communication with
>children too young to speak.  I also wanted to make a connection now,
>in case I had a question about ASL later.
>     The particular theme which interests me, and for which I haven't
>found a lot of information, is how does the use of gestures with babies
>in a multilingual (spoken) environment affect their learning of spoken
>languages.
>
>Thomas Alexander
>